Love Guru, The

24

Paramount Pictures (88 minutes)
and Marco Schnabel
Mike Myers , Jessica Alba , Justin Timberlake , Ben Kingsley , Meagan Good , John Oliver , Verne Troyer , and Romany Malco

Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references

Summary: In the comedy The Love Guru, Pitka is an American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child and raised by gurus. He moves back to the U.S. to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His unorthodox methods are put to the test when he must settle a rift between Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife. After the split, Roanoke’s wife starts dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande out of revenge, sending her husband into a major professional skid – to the horror of the teams’ owner Jane Bullard and Coach Cherkov. Pitka must return the couple to marital nirvana and get Roanoke back on his game so the team can break the 40-year-old “Bullard Curse” and win the Stanley Cup. (Paramount Pictures)

Peter Rainer
Christian Science Monitor:
(75) What links all these characters is Myers's gift for antic, elfin burlesque. He's like a second-best Peter Sellers.

James Berardinelli
ReelViews:
(63) Occasional bursts of comedy keep things from becoming unbearable but whenever Myers tries to get even a little serious or advance the "plot," the desire to take a nap becomes almost overpowering.

Stina Chyn
Film Threat:
(60) To be sure, The Love Guru is incredibly funny. Side-splitting laughter only stops when the movie does, so don't expect it to linger all the way to the parking lot.

M. E. Russell
Portland Oregonian:
(58) I still kind of find myself admiring the actor, and the film. Love Guru is insane and self-indulgent but also fully committed, and there's a surprising undercurrent of earnestness to its philosophy portions.

Richard Corliss
Time:
(50) The Love Guru is a shambling, hit-or-miss thing, like an old Laurel and Hardy two-reeler. And like the situations those comics often got into, this movie is a fine mess.

Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer:
(50) Piles dumb gag upon dumb gag - it's like benign pummeling. Occasionally, you just have to laugh.

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